Alico, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Alico's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, John Mills, Managing Partner at ICR. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Alico's third quarter 2026 conference call. On the call today are John Kiernan, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brad Heine, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the third quarter 2026 earnings release, which went out yesterday at approximately 4 p.m., 415 Eastern Time. If you've not had a chance to view the release, it's available on the investor relations portion of the company's website at alicoinc.com. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on Alico's website as well. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to risk, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Important factors that can cause or contribute to such differences include risk detail in the company's quarterly reports on Form 10Q, annual reports on Form 10K, current reports on Form 8K, and any amendments thereto filed with the SEC and those mentioned in the earnings release. The company undertakes no obligation to subsequently update or revise the forward-looking statements made on today's call, except as required by law. During this call, the company may also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, and net debt. For more details on these measures, please refer to the company's press release issued yesterday. And with that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to the company's president and CEO, Mr. John Kiernan.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter results reflect a business that is generating cash and building the flexibility to execute our strategy on our own terms. We ended the quarter with $55.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, up $17.5 million since fiscal year end, our strongest balance sheet position since we began our strategic transformation in January 2025. That cash position creates net debt of just $29.8 million and gives us valuable flexibility to advance our entitled real estate development pipeline on our own timeline, not one dictated by liquidity. Given that strength, we're raising our fiscal year 2026 guidance. Let me walk through the key developments during and subsequent to the third quarter end. First, we entered into an agricultural lease agreement for approximately 3,280 acres in Hendry County. structured with an option to purchase the property for $29.5 million or $9,000 per acre. This transaction validates our land monetization strategy in two ways. It gives us recurring contracted lease income and gives our counterparty the ability to acquire the land at what we believe is a fair current market value for that acreage. That $9,000 per acre price holds through June of 2029, after which the purchase price escalates annually. The current $9,000 per acre figure is consistent with the per acre values we've realized on our recent agricultural land sales and supports our conservative view that our roughly 47,300 acre portfolio carries substantially more value than is reflected in our current market capitalization. We structured this deal so that it delivers value for us either way. Contracted lease income and a compelling embedded value outcome if the option is exercised down the road. That kind of flexibility is what our land monetization strategy is designed to capture. Second, during the quarter we acquired the remaining 49% interest in Citri, a joint venture through which we held a 51% interest in approximately 1,200 acres of land within our Joshua Grove in DeSoto County. Because we held the majority interest, Citri's assets and liabilities, including its approximately $3.3 million of outstanding debt, were already reflected on our consolidated balance sheet. As part of this transaction, we paid $2 million in cash for the remaining 49% interest and took on sole responsibility for that debt, which our joint venture partner had previously shared. We now own 100% of that entity and its underlying Joshua Grove acres outright which we believe simplifies our corporate structure and gives us full control over the future reuse of that property. Third, Corkscrew Grove East Village has moved into state and federal permitting following its local entitlement approval in April. That process is progressing and we believe that we remain on track for potential construction commencement in 2028 or 2029 pending receipt of all required approvals from the South Florida Water Management District the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Fourth, we remain focused on operational discipline and continue to review our operating cost structure to improve cash flow. This year we are executing a number of initiatives to reduce overhead, including a new office lease that we expect will begin delivering additional savings starting in the second quarter of next fiscal year. Fifth, on the capital allocation side, We completed $10 million of our share repurchase program during the quarter, having repurchased 245,399 shares in total, including 38,059 shares in the third quarter alone. Combined with our regular common dividend, we continue to return meaningful capital to shareholders this year while still building cash, which speaks to the strength of the cash flow the business is generating and supports our strategic transformation. Our diversified land management programs, including our agricultural leases, sod, rock and sand royalty arrangements, all continue to perform well, and approximately 98% of our farmable acreage continues to be leased. Our priorities for fiscal 2026 remain unchanged. Optimize our agricultural operations by maximizing revenue from our diversified leasing programs while maintaining cost controls. advance our development projects through the entitlement process with particular focus on Corkscrew Grove villages, balance our entitlement-related investments with shareholder returns while maintaining financial flexibility, and pursue operational excellence by leveraging our experienced team and local relationships to execute efficiently. Given our performance through the first nine months of the fiscal year, we are raising our fiscal year 2026 guidance. We now expect adjusted EBITDA of approximately $15 million. And we now expect to end the fiscal year with approximately $48 million of cash in net debt of approximately $37 million. This liquidity should be sufficient to support our operations for at least three additional fiscal years to 2029 without requiring any additional asset sales. We recognize this remains a multi-year transformation. and we believe the progress we are reporting this quarter on our balance sheet in our leasing program and with our development entitlements demonstrate that we remain on track to unlock the substantial value we believe exists within our approximately 47,300-acre Florida portfolio while maintaining our commitment to responsible land stewardship. With that, I'll turn it over to Brad Heine, our CFO, to walk through our detailed financial results.